Muri dev blog, part 1

Hi there! This is the first of a series of blog posts about Muri’s development.

I started work on Muri in May, with the goal of making a simple DOS-like platform shooter inspired by Duke Nukem and Commander Keen. Unlike my freeware games, this one was made specifically for Ludosity.

Gameplay

Jumping, ducking and shooting is pretty much all you do in this game, with the strongest weapon being used automatically as long as you have ammunition for it. I had a button for changing weapons during development, but testers either forgot you could switch weapons after a while, or stuck with the basic gun to save on ammo and wound up never using their best ones. Being forced to use your currently best weapon improved the pace of the game quite a bit.

There are four episodes selectable from the start, with increasingly tougher enemies and stages. Now that I think about it, I miss being able to select episode (or the equivalent) in most modern games. It’s a good way to separate Muri into distinct and manageable pieces, since nothing is carried over between episodes.

There are some things the player needs to figure out for themselves, like what the “CELLs” do and where to find them, but I think that’s part of the fun. A player often appreciates having figured something out more than being told about it.

Difficulty

There are four selectable difficulties, with the easiest giving you a lot more health and ammo. The harder ones remove health pickups and extra lives, but the enemies remain the same.

I wondered throughout the whole development whether the game should have continues, or even infinite continues, rather than having to start the episode over when you run out of extra lives. But since the episodes are rather short, and it didn’t really fit the arcade-style nature of the game, I decided not to include them. Instead I added secret ways to get through the episodes faster at the cost of a potentially higher score.

The highest difficulty is pretty tough, since you’re allowed fewer mistakes. The first episode isn’t too challenging even on this difficulty though.

That’s it for the introduction – next time I’ll talk about the graphics, EGA limitations and “smooth mode”!